Extraction of Normal Maps and Texturing

In my opinion texturing can often be a long and painful process, where many get discouraged and tired of their personal projects. Maybe because they are not happy with what they are seeing. I actually like texturing because the texturing is able to completely change the concept of your character by giving him different aspects just by changing colors and tones in certain places.

The creation of the normal maps was done in Xnormal, a piece of software that has helped me a lot! The current version is very fast; I was able to generate files of 8192x8192 in just five minutes.

I had a problem with a map where the Y was reversed in normal - this caused a very bad effect. I swapped it for the right side and the rest went smoothly.

Once the normal and AO maps are to hand it makes easy to create textures. Many choose to use software such as BodyPaint, Photoshop Extended and even the ZBrush. In my case I only used something like that with the body parts of the character, because it was quite tricky to paint directly on 3D on those iron parts and the effect was quite bad.

I started the process with Photoshop, texturing the sculpt with all I had. I began by choosing what colors to use for the textures. I could have done it like I did with the normals, but I ended up leaving that to the next step. While applying the textures I used a bit of Multiply, Screen and Overlay, which are settings that can do many things.

When I reached a certain level of quality I saved everything and tested the 3D model to see if everything would go well. Then I completed all the textures needed: Diffuse, Normal and Specular (Fig.08).

All textures were created in 8192x8192, to yield at 3ds Max 4096x4096 textures and Unreal Engine and on Unreal Engine I've reduced to 2048 or even 1024 to prevent it freezing within the game.

Fig. 08

Exporting / Importing

All the textures were exported in. The import was simple and I applied them in their corresponding meshes. Fig.09 shows the full inside of the engine.

Fig. 09

To make his eyes glow I applied a texture to his helmet which would serve opacity (Fig. 10).

Fig. 10

To succeed with Unreal Engine, it's important to pay attention to materials, lighting and even the post-production process to get the desired effects.

Here's the final render (Fig.11) and a head-shot (Fig.12).

Fig.11

Fig.12

So that's it! Hope you enjoyed this Making Of. If you have any questions, please just contact me.
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